Product Description

Stephen Coonts returns with a brand new thriller and a whole new kind of hero... Tommy Carmellini was the best burglar in the business. He was so good that most of his victims took weeks to find out they'd been robbed. But even the best slip up and they got him in the end. But then Tommy was given a choice. Go to prison or work for the CIA. State penitentiary or Langley? No choice at all. Carmellini is sent to guard a remote farmhouse where a star KGB defector is being debriefed. But when he gets there, a ruthless team of commandos are slaughtering everyone in sight...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #83084 in Books
• Published on: 2005-05-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 416 pages

Matthew Lewin, THE GUARDIAN, 2 October
"Coonts regularly pulls off one of the triciest feats of thriller writing -- combining convincing action, drama and high tension with humour, but without descending to a flippant disregard for human life and morality."

About the Author
Stephen Coonts is a veteran naval aviator who flew combat missions during the Vietnam War. His previous novels have been worldwide bestsellers. A former attorney, he resides with his wife and son in Maryland.

Customer Reviews

Stephen Coonts writing like Mickey Spillane
"Liars & Thieves" (published as "Wages of Sin" in Europe) is a quite different book from the Jake Grafton series that made Stephen Coonts famous. Personally, I don't like the change in style.

I'm a fan of thrillers, especially international thrillers and techno-thrillers. I like most of Stephen Coonts' books and consider them to be "the thinking man's thriller", a notch up on the intellectual scale from Tom Clancy, for example.

"Liars & Thieves" is different from the Jake Grafton series in many ways. To start with, the main character is Tommy Carmellini, a CIA operative who plays a secondary role in the last four Jake Grafton books.

Tommy Carmellini reminds me of Mike Hammer, the fictional hero of Mickey Spillane's books. He's physically big, he's tough and doesn't shun violence, he's great with the fast-paced repartee and he doesn't claim to be all that smart. Women find him attractive (what's with these silly women anyway?) and he beds them without much emotional involvement. And he tells his story in the first person.

Fortunately, Stephen Coonts is not 100% loyal to the first-person style. As the book progresses there are more and more passages that tell parts of the story that Tommy Carmellini can't tell because he's not at that location.

There is a lot of violence in this book, something that doesn't particularly appeal to me. The body count rises slowly but surely through the story, with Tommy personally killing 13 of the "bad guys"! These shootouts and other fights are described in detail, and are exciting at first, but about half way through the book it gets tedious.

The romantic (to use the word very loosely) subplots are very minor. Tommy succeeds (without trying or particularly enjoying it) in bedding three of the female characters. But if Tommy doesn't really care much one way or the other, why should we?

The weirdest scene in the whole book is when Tommy makes love to one of the women in a bugged hotel room, knowing that his best friend is monitoring the bugs! The fact that he doesn't particularly like the lady in question just added to my incredulity!

A general problem with the whole book is that the characters are poorly presented and not very believable. Surprising, considering that Stephen Coonts is otherwise very good at writing books populated with real people.

In particular, Tommy Carmellini doesn't come across as a believable person. To make it worse, he isn't a person that I find all that appealing. He's great at shooting holes in the bad guys and making clever remarks, but I'd prefer a leading "good guy" who is smarter and displays more real human characteristics.

On the plus side, the plot is pretty good. The story is partly based on the real-life defection of Vasili Mitrokhin, the KGB archivist who arrived in Great Britain in 1992 with six suitcases of notes from classified KGB files! Mix this with an American presidential nomination and people in high places with a past that is damaging to their political careers and you have an exciting cocktail.

Still, the good plot can't compensate for the disappointing characters and the repetitive violence, so I'm only giving three stars to "Liars & Thieves".

Rennie Petersen

Alternative Title
Just a short note to alert people that this book is also sold as "Wages of Sin".

Stephen Coonts writing like Mickey Spillane
"Wages of Sin" (published as "Liars & Thieves" in N. America) is a quite different book from the Jake Grafton series that made Stephen Coonts famous. Personally, I don't like the change in style.

I'm a fan of thrillers, especially international thrillers and techno-thrillers. I like most of Stephen Coonts' books and consider them to be "the thinking man's thriller", a notch up on the intellectual scale from Tom Clancy, for example.

"Wages of Sin" is different from the Jake Grafton series in many ways. To start with, the main character is Tommy Carmellini, a CIA operative who plays a secondary role in the last four Jake Grafton books.

Tommy Carmellini reminds me of Mike Hammer, the fictional hero of Mickey Spillane's books. He's physically big, he's tough and doesn't shun violence, he's great with the fast-paced repartee and he doesn't claim to be all that smart. Women find him attractive (what's with these silly women anyway?) and he beds them without much emotional involvement. And he tells his story in the first person.

Fortunately, Stephen Coonts is not 100% loyal to the first-person style. As the book progresses there are more and more passages that tell parts of the story that Tommy Carmellini can't tell because he's not at that location.

There is a lot of violence in this book, something that doesn't particularly appeal to me. The body count rises slowly but surely through the story, with Tommy personally killing 13 of the "bad guys"! These shootouts and other fights are described in detail, and are exciting at first, but about half way through the book it gets tedious.

The romantic (to use the word very loosely) subplots are very minor. Tommy succeeds (without trying or particularly enjoying it) in bedding two of the female characters. But if Tommy doesn't really care much one way or the other, why should we?

The weirdest scene in the whole book is when Tommy makes love to one of the women in a bugged hotel room, knowing that his best friend is monitoring the bugs! The fact that he doesn't particularly like the lady in question just added to my incredulity!

A general problem with the whole book is that the characters are poorly presented and not very believable. Surprising, considering that Stephen Coonts is otherwise very good at writing books populated with real people.

In particular, Tommy Carmellini doesn't come across as a believable person. To make it worse, he isn't a person that I find all that appealing. He's great at shooting holes in the bad guys and making clever remarks, but I'd prefer a leading "good guy" who is smarter and displays more real human characteristics.

On the plus side, the plot is pretty good. The story is partly based on the real-life defection of Vasili Mitrokhin, the KGB archivist who arrived in Great Britain in 1992 with six suitcases of notes from classified KGB files! Mix this with an American presidential nomination and people in high places with a past that is damaging to their political careers and you have an exciting cocktail.

Still, the good plot can't compensate for the disappointing characters and the repetitive violence, so I'm only giving three stars to "Wages of Sin".

Rennie Petersen